If we included boys in our thinking, we might discover a fuller and more accurate understanding of deep fakes. As a woman, I understand the concern for girls and women, but I am also a mother. And just like our girls, boys are our children too.

As a mother I am extremely concerned at the way in which people tend to shove the sexual abuse of boys, and men out of the picture. Until people start including boys and men in our thinking about sexual abuse, exploitation and the patriarchy, I fear it will get even worse. In fact, I think the failure to confront the sexual abuse of boys and men has undermined our ability to defend girls and women. In a way, ignoring the rape and molestation of boys and men makes us hypocrites.

More than once, I’ve encountered men who’ve wondered why women (especially mothers) show less concern about the sexual abuse of their sons, than mothers show their daughters.

For several years, I belonged to a poetry club where these questions were raised and discussed. Do women think boys are the job of men, men asked? Do women abdicate responsibility to fathers? If so, what does that say to boys when they become men? What does a man think of women when his own mother refused to defend him as a boy? For a long time, women in the club kept blaming men, defending women and explaining women were as vulnerable as their sons - or too weak to protect their sons, let alone themselves.

And men kept writing powerful poems about the sexual abuse of boys – and men.

Eventually, the male poets broke through our defenses and all of us began to hear what these men were telling us. In response, I wrote a poem titled, Were You Raped as a Boy? Turns out the answer was yes for several men, while the other men knew a boy (a brother, cousin or friend) who had been raped.

One woman with five sons and one daughter was afraid that one son who had turned into a very angry, often violent man and spent several years in prison, had been raped when he was boy. It took that woman a couple years, but she finally asked her son, and he said yes, then told her who had raped him. He also told his mother, that was the reason the only woman he’d ever trusted was his sister (who had seen his distress and asked him that question the day it happened). Where was I, asked his mother? “Mom” replied her son “you were making dinner, cleaning house, and doing everything you could to make everything look perfect.” When Jane reached the word “look” in her poem, loathing poured out of her voice like hot lava. She had titled her poem, Making Everything Look Perfect.

I’m not here to toot my own horn, but I did a lot of research, then published a story that might help some people understand my point my point of view a little better.

https://medium.com/@meraffey/the-faces-of-pedophilia-97fd92d86752

No, I do not think I’ve strayed off topic. No one here has even mentioned the horrific sexual images of little boys that litter the internet – and that troubles me. From my perspective, Taylor Swift is the first person to use their celebrity power in a way that can help boys, as well as girls, women and men – and in my mind, that is exactly what she is doing.

As always, articles written by Katie Jgln make me think – and feel.